Most nations' economies depend heavily on international commerce. By maintaining a positive balance of payments from foreign trade relations, each nation aims to grow its wealth. Similar attempts by Britain in the 19th century led to the nation starting a war with China over two plants, the camellia and the poppy, according to Sarah Rose. (Rose 1). Britain believed that its commerce with China was costing it money by creating a negative balance of payments. As a result, the government promoted the development of trade networks to transport illegally imported poppy into China. Opium commerce corrected the BOP imbalance. However, it resulted in two wars which Britain won. This led to the legalisation of opium importation in China. It stabilised the trade with balance of payments running in favour of Britain. However, it did not satisfy the Britons as they still sought to control the tea industry to ensure that they were in charge of most major trade items in the global market. This paper describes how the efforts of Britain to ensure that the payment in its trade with China sparked conflict between the two nations. It will use evidence from Rose’s book and other academic sources to prove how these efforts made Britain perpetrated one of the largest incidents of industrial espionage in human history. It is this espionage that brought the conflict to an end.
Britain’s Trade links with China
A look at history will reveal that most of the time, there has been one power controlling a good portion of the global economic, social and political aspects. This power came with wealth and military prowess. Britain was the world’s superpower in the 19th century. It had unchallenged power over almost one half of then inhabited world. The country controlled a substantive amount of exploitable resources (Brook et al. 3). It controlled the price of major commodities and could adjust the supply and even demand to meet its interests. During this time, tea was one of the most popular drinks in the world, second after water just as it is today. Britain had a problem with the status quo because China controlled all the tea supply (Chung 412). This meant that Britain could not control the commodity as it was reduced to a price-taker. Towards the middle of the 19th century, the The East India Company, which had been tasked with the role of conducting business on behalf of the Crown in Asia and India, was at the brink of collapsing because of the imbalance of payment in its trade with China. There was need to offset these imbalances and set it on the road of revival. This saw a group of British businessmen set out to strengthen the tea industry in India on behalf of the crown.
Efforts by Britain to Establish a Favorable BOP in Its Trade with China
Britain had to find a way to offset imbalances in the balance of payments resulting from its trade with China. Before the 15th century, Britain and the whole of Europe used to trade with China for its tea. However, Europe did not have commodities that could be exported to China, the country had to exchange gold and silver with the Chinese traders in order to sustain the supply of the tea at the local market (Chung 416; Brook et al 5). The importation of tea had to be sustained with profits gained from other sectors of the economy. There was need to have a self-sustaining trade with China. Britain learnt that the Portuguese were offsetting imbalances in their trade with China by obtaining opium from India and selling it at a profit. Britain moved with speed and obtained control of India (Chung 428). The British East India Company was sent by the government to India to take over the Opium trade. It created a monopoly in poppy plant cultivation by developing cheaper ways of cultivating the crop in Bengal province (Chung 415). By the end of the 18th century, European countries controlled most of the Opium exports to China and this offset the deficits in the balance of payments in their trade with China.
Britain and China started supremacy wars due to their control of the two plants: tea and poppy. In addition to tea, there was a large demand for Chinese goods such as porcelain pottery and silk in Europe (Brook and Bob 2). This meant that there were chances that Europe, and specifically Britain, was still likely to be experiencing negative balance of payments from the trade with China. Another problem arose, the Chinese leadership noted that the number of opium addicts was rising steadily. This paralyzed economic, social and political development of the Chinese society. In order to prevent more damage, the Yongzheng emperor, who ruled China between ruled 1722–35, banned the importation of the drug. The British East India Company was affiliated to the government and thus could not carry out illegal business directly after the ban (Brook and Bob 144). The company withdrew from the supply chain and focused on the growth of poppy plants which was then sold to country traders. The trade gained momentum again with corrupt Chinese officials supporting the exchange of gold and silver for the opium. The gold and silver could them be handed over to the company and used to obtain tea and other goods from China for sell in England at a profit (Lovell 9).
The Two Opium Wars
Britain felt that it was time to prevail upon the Chinese government to legalize the sale of opium because dealing with the good in the underground economy had become too risky for the company. This made the country declare war on China in a bid to force it tom legalize the trade in opium. The war first war lasted for three years (1839-1842). By the end of it, China declined to lift the ban on the trade. However, the war distracted the authorities from completely stopping the trade. Britain renewed its efforts to have China lift the ban and started the second opium war that lasted four years (1856-1860). This time, Britain was joined by France that had similar interests in the opium trade (Lovell 77). The Chinese government was forced to legalize the trade, though it now started charging a small levy on its importation.
Europe now enjoyed a favorable balance of payments in its trade with China. However, this did not satisfy Britain. It wanted to be in control of all the important commodities that defined global trade at the time (Chung 411). The country was troubled that it had very little information on growth of tea. Britain tasked itself with the responsibility of ensuring that it masters the art of tea growing to take over the trade (Brook and Bob 5). Rose notes that the task required a man like Robert Fortune to spy, hunt for the plant, steal it then transfer the Chinese gardening skills to the Britons. Fortune was a botanist and the fact that Britain was one of the most scientifically developed countries yet it had not mastered tea growing disturbed him. Rose notes that scientists were in competition with each out to prove that their area of specialization was doing better (Rose 13). Therefore, Fortune saw importation of the tea-growing technique as a potential way to improve the perception of the botanical science field.
Industrial Espionage that Prevented Further Opium Wars
Fortune’s success in earlier voyages to search for new plants interested the East India Trading company that facilitated his travel to China to smuggle tea out of the country. He set out to China around the middle of the 19th century to discover the art of growing tea. In the course of his journey, he had to fight bandits and pirates. He had to disguise himself as a Chinese merchant in order to access the interior of the country. His journey took a total of two years (Rose 66). Eventually, he made out with tea plants and ideas on how it is grown and processed to the final product. He made his journey to India where he taught British East India Company’s workers the art of tea growing. The plants brought by Fortune propagated the rest of the tea that was grown in India. With Britain in control of large plantations of tea in India, it was able to have control over world trade again and this ended its conflict with China. To date, China does not seem to have gotten over the incident. Writers have different perspectives on whether the act by Fortune should be categorized as industrial espionage or not. However, many Chinese writers feel that they lost the ability to command the supply of tea unfairly. White (2010) noted that during David Cameron’s visit to China, Chinese officials requested the British PM’s delegation not to wear Remembrance Day poppies because they symbolized the humiliation that China suffered at the hands of European powers during the two wars. The delegation allegedly turned down this request. China felt the negative effects of Fortunes action and the two opium wars for a long time. It lost its position in international trade and its economy slowed down.
Conclusion
Rose’s book helps us to better understand western imperialism in the 19th century. Countries in the west tried implementing various strategies to ensure that they control the economy and politics of the time. These efforts sometimes saw them introduce unorthodox means such as waging war against countries to compel them to change their internal laws in order to favor the former. Where this failed, the countries would result to using other means such as espionage to get the control of important economic and political factors. Today, many countries have raised issues about the infringement on patent rights by Chinese entities. However, they tend to forget that the country suffered one of the biggest setbacks in its economic growth due to industrial espionage and this might have created an impression that patent bright can be broken and perpetrators let to go unpunished.
Conceptual discussion questions
Some European powers supported Britain during the second Opium war. Did they really benefit from Britain’s Victory over China?
Can the act of sneaking out tea plants from China be classified as industrial espionage?
Was Europe justified to wage a war against China to have the rulers change their laws on Opium importation and consumption?
Works Cited
Brook, Timothy, and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi. Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952. Univ of California Press, 2000.
Chung, Tan. "The Britain-China-India Trade Triangle (1771-1840)." The Indian Economic & Social History Review 11.4 (1974): 411-431.
Lovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China. The Overlook Press, 2015.
Rose, Sarah. For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History. Penguin, 2010.
White, Michael. David Cameron should not have worn that poppy in China. The Guardian, November 10, 2010. Web. February 13, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2010/nov/10/david-cameron-poppy-china-michael-white
